Of course touch means finger touches. Writing with a pencil or stylus isn't called touching. This is pretty basic stuff, it just seems as though you have some axe to grind with this poster and want to nit pik at semantics, but in doing to it just looks rather childish.
I'm not sure that's true. For example, in the Tablet PC space, a touch screen could mean that a screen responded to a stylus, finger, or both, but usually, just the stylus! And even before the first iPod came out in 2001, screens in PDAs were referred to as touch-screens.
Handspring Edge, 2001:
"THIS WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER PHYSICAL DAMAGE TO
THE SURFACE OF THE PRODUCT, INCLUDING CRACKS OR SCRATCHES ON
THE LCD TOUCHSCREEN OR OUTSIDE CASING."
A review of Treo 650 suggests the finger worked on large areas, 3 years before the iPhone was released, but the UI buttons in the PalmOS were unchanged from small ones created 10 years earlier for stylus-access only. (In this light, Apple's innovation was to require action buttons to be at least 40x40 pixels with enough spacing from each other in their new iPhone OS, now called iOS.)
http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/palm/treo-650.html
"Extensive use of touch screen allows finger access but you will need the built-in touch pen for pulling down menus and making selections."
One could argue that Apple should not be allowed to sell a phone without a keyboard since they're improving on the Treo 650's design, just like Samsung should not be allowed to sell a phone with a larger screen and multiple physical buttons since they're improving on the iPhone design.
My overall argument was not about the terminology, but the claim that Apple invented touching with your fingers - so not sure why you picked this one point to disagree with me on if it's a childish semantic.
But if "touch means finger touches" in the tech world then what do you call devices designed to be used with a stylus? Not touchscreen? And in general English "touch" doesn't mean "with fingers" either.
